Runway Incursions occur when aircraft or vehicles enter onto a runway and conflict with aircraft cleared to land or take off on the same runway. Runway incursions are caused by human error, either by an Air Traffic Controller, a pilot, or a vehicle operator. One or a combination of five primary factors cause operational errors and deviations from procedures and directions: position uncertainty and poor ground navigation; incorrect; incomplete or misinterpreted communications; improper clearances; lack of situational awareness; and human error.
Safety compromising incidents between aircraft are an insidious problem. They are difficult to anticipate and difficult to analyze statistically, and they occur randomly with increasing frequency. In 1988 reported runway incursions totaled 187. By 1999, the total increased to 322. The reaction time required for a pilot or air traffic tower controller to detect, evaluate, and resolve a conflict is extremely short. The incident develops quickly amongst the tower controller's responsibilities to monitor and separate traffic, sequence arrivals and departures, issue weather and traffic advisories, coordinate with other controllers, communicate instructions to pilots, and maintain full usage of runway flow capacities. Pilots are equally busy preparing for takeoff or guiding the aircraft to the active runway, taxiing on a busy airport surface all the while communicating with Air Traffic Controllers and/or listening to other communications to maintain situational awareness. Critical in this environment is the need to maximize the time between recognition of a safety hazard and the execution of remedial action.
At any airport, many vehicle movement events are occurring simultaneously. Staging of aircraft for arrival and departure and providing for separation assurance of vehicles on the surface movement area (runway incursion avoidance) requires continuous awareness of dynamically developing situations, fast and accurate decision making and the ability to transform decisions into action.
To reduce runway incursions due to lost or disoriented aircraft, conflicts with aircraft landing navigation in low visibility conditions, unfamiliarity with local procedures and airport layouts, and truncated or misunderstood clearances or other frequency congestion related communication and workload problems, the present invention utilizes guidance display means such as electronic message boards or visual aids that provide improved surface navigational awareness and surface movement clearance validation by: 1) displaying route guidance instructions to aircraft at ramp and taxiway intersections, confirming for pilots that their aircraft is at the correct location and is in the assigned queue and sequence before entering active runways; 2) providing visual confirmation of verbally delivered runway clearances to aircraft and vehicles at all runway entrances; and 3) lessening frequency congestion on ground and local communications channels.
The inventors of the present invention have analyzed surface movement operations and runway incursion incidents with the objective of creating solutions that reduce the likelihood of a safety incident developing in the first place. Prior solutions such as sensors that provide collision avoidance advisories subject to limited reaction times (measured in seconds) to correct a safety incident already in progress are inadequate because separation standards have already been violated. Runway Land and Hold Short Lighting Systems are helpful for go-no-go situations but are not capable of presenting necessary safety-related situational information or directional information. Prior art solutions do not take into account the complexities and interdependencies of surface movement operations. The SMART Board System of the present invention has been designed to overcome the limitations of the prior art, and in so doing, also increases the efficiency of vehicle movement and provides capacity gains for an airport.